e matter, but were compelled to adopt a policy of extermination by the
necessity of their position. The liberty of the blacks was in the
balance of fate against the lives of the whites. He could strike that
balance in favor of the blacks only by the total destruction of the
whites. Therefore, the whites, men, women and children, were doomed to
death. "What is the use of killing the louse and leaving the nit?" he
asked coarsely and grimly on an occasion when the matter was under
consideration. And again he was reported to have, with unrelenting
temper, represented to his friends in secret council, that, "It was for
our safety not to spare one white skin alive." And so it was unmistakably
in his purpose to leave not a single egg lying about Charleston, when he
was done with it, out of which might possibly be hatched another future
slave-holder and oppressor of his people. "Thorough" was in truth, the
merciless motto of that terrible man.

All roads, on the red map of his plot, led to Rome. Every available
instrument which fell in his way, he utilized to deepen and extend his
underground agitation among the blacks. Wherefore it was that he seized
upon the sectional struggle which was going on in Congress over the
admission of Missouri, and pressed it to do service for his cause. The
passionate wish, unconsciously perhaps, colored if it did not create the
belief on his part, that the real cause of that great debate in
Washington, and excitement in the country at large, was a movement for
general emancipation of the slaves. It was said that he went so far in
this direction as to put it into the heads of the blacks that Congress
had actually enacted an emancipation law, and that therefore their
continued enslavement was illegal. Such preaching must have certainly
added fresh fuel to the deep sense of injury, then burning in the
breasts of many of the slaves, and must have operated also to prepare
them for the next step which Vesey's plan of campaign contemplated,
viz.: a resort to force to wrest from the whites the freedom which was
theirs, not only by the will of Heaven, but as well by the supreme law
of the land.

A period of underground agitation, such as Vesey had carried on for
about three or four years, will, unless arrested, pass naturally into
one of organized action. Vesey's movement reached, in the winter of
1821-22, such a stage. As far as it is known, he had up to this time
done the work of agitator singlehanded